Google may leave China following e-mail breach

January 13, 2010|By From news services

Google Inc. will stop censoring its search results in China and may pull out of the country completely after discovering computer hackers had tricked human rights activists into opening their e-mail accounts to outsiders.

Tuesday's announcement heralds a major shift for Google, which has said it will obey Chinese laws that require some politically and socially sensitive issues to be blocked from search results.

Google disclosed in a blog post that it had detected a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China." Further investigation revealed "a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists," Google said in the post written by its chief legal officer.

Google added that it is "no longer willing to continue censoring our results" on its Chinese search engine, as the government requires. Google said the decision could force it to shut down the site and its offices in China.

Google has struggled to expand in China, where it has less than 30 percent of the search market, versus more than 60 percent for Baidu Inc.

A spokesman for the Chinese consulate in San Francisco had no comment.